On this first day of the new year, Americans everywhere will be trying to keep resolutions — for example, to treat others better; to stop smoking; to start exercising; to lose weight.
In that same New Year’s spirit, perhaps it’s time for Uncle Sam to shed a few pounds — to start taking care of himself the same way so many Americans will try to take care of themselves as 2015 begins. Fortunately, there are thousands of small and easy ways dear Sam can undertake this task. Perhaps the new Congress can even help him do it.
The Washington Examiner‘s Luke Rosiak reported this week that bureaucrats have been ignoring nearly 9,000 concrete recommendations from the Government Accountability Office — the government’s independent watchdog agency — to combat waste, fraud and inefficiency in the federal government. Some of the recommendations date all the way back to the Reagan era, and have been ignored for more than 30 years.
Some of them could have averted major problems. For example, an ignored recommendation from 1996 (five years before Sept. 11) called for specific steps to tighten airline security in order to prevent terrorist attacks on airliners.
Another recommendation, from 2012, tried to make sure the Veterans Administration was accurately measuring how long veterans had to wait for healthcare. Still another, from 1998, found that 20,000 people were using false addresses in multiple states to defraud the food stamp program. GAO found that the Department of Agriculture, which runs the food-aid program, lacked a system to track recipients nationwide, and as a result people were able to cheat the government — and those needy Americans who actually count on this program — by taking benefits in multiple states at the same time.
As America’s entitlement programs continue to devour an ever-larger share of the federal budget, the nation is finally reaching a tipping-point. Michael Barone has observed that this trend is already starting to push highway maintenance obligations off the federal books and down to the states. For the first time in decades of deficit spending, the federal government is finally being forced by the merciless math of the budget process to set priorities.
As this trend worsens in coming years, bureaucrats may find themselves with no choice but to start showing more concern about waste and fraud. But before they reach that point, Congress can step in and force their hands.
If the bureaucrats cannot on their own show the modicum of respect for the taxpayer required to spend his money wisely, the new Republican majority might be able to help. Congress can pass — and President Obama can sign — a series of bills requiring the bureaucracies to adopt several of the more important GAO recommendations.
Since the 2010 election, Congress has done quite a bit to curb federal spending, especially though sequestration. But given GAO’s recommendations, it can do quite a bit more and save billions without hurting anyone but the fraudsters.
Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making and keeping.
